GO WEST! Organizational Empowerment

Go West! with Christine West

“There's a basic philosophy here that by empowering... workers you'll make their jobs far more interesting, and they'll be able to work at a higher level than they would have without all that information just a few clicks away.”
-- Bill Gates


All people need some means to pay their bills and maintain the lifestyle they have created. For those of us who weren’t born into wealth, who haven’t won the lottery, or found a wealthy spouse for financial support, we must earn a wage and work. The question is: What motivates us to do what we do?

It is interesting to note that money is not always the prime motivator, nor is fear.

Turn over is expensive for companies, as is change in management teams and company restructuring. Everyone deals with change and transition differently. Change in life is inevitable, but how do companies manage that change? How do leaders and managers manage the cost of their decisions? Too often repeated patterns occur in the organizational life that cost the organization more because of treating symptoms and refusal to find the root cause. Proper problem solving requires establishing an identity or role in the problem. For example, if an organization has pattern of stability and 20% turnover in a month, what is the human motivation behind a group of people to join and to later leave an organization all in the same month?

The easy route is blaming the people who moved on and never taking responsibility. These actions are costly and are signs of an immature organization. These are important factors to analyze to maintain stability monetary growth and workforce development.

Psychology plays a tremendous role in the business world. Human behavior is more complex than just seeking rewards or avoiding punishments. Human motivation has a deeper cause and a more profound purpose than many in the business world think.

Most people want to discover their purpose and have their talents optimized through that purpose. When a person desires to engage her talents and realize her true potential in life, this is called self-actualization. Once a person is self-actualized, she is in a position to follow her calling. A leader needs to lead, a manager needs to manage, an engineer needs to engineer, salesperson needs to sell, a healer need to treat illness, a speaker needs to speak and narrate, a dancer needs to dance, a singer needs to sing, and a writer needs to write. If these needs are not met, the person feels on edge and lacking something.

One of the challenges in the current business world (regardless of the industry) stems from the fact that management teams are often managing employees as though the management teams are seeking rewards or avoiding punishments instead of accurately understanding the motivation are of each individual. Clearly, each person is an individual and is motivated by different incentives. However, most organizations do not create a structure to help a person to reach their peak potential.

Another challenge in many organizations is that management teams use the word “empowerment” too loosely. If an employee is empowered to do his or her job responsibilities, then that employee needs to be allowed to be creative and think out of the box and be allowed to make decisions. Many management teams do not take the time to evaluate individual behaviors, and instead, enforce an autocratic leadership style to micromanage the employee. This creates a parent-child relationship in the workplace. Most employees would be more productive if management teams managed employees as an adult to adult. Adults communicate with other adults; parents control children. When employees are treated as adults, this boosts moral and creates true empowerment.

We spend a lot of our time at work and it should be a positive experience. Some people have been living in a world that always told them what to do. This makes life easy for them. They never let themselves discover their weakness or failures, not to mention their strengths. One can learn from self-actualizing people what the ideal attitude toward work might be under the most favorable circumstances. These highly evolved individuals assimilate their work into their identity of self, where work actually becomes part of the self and part of the individual’s definition of self.

It is then easier for each of us to be who we are instead of working toward being something we are not. This is true empowerment.

Genuinely,

Christine

About the Author: Christine M. West, TheBusinessMD, 2240 E. Tudor Rd. #976, Anchorage, Alaska, USA 99507. Phone 1-907-223-8403. Email: info@thebusinessmd.net, http://www.businessmd.net/ http://thebusinessmd.blogspot.com/

Christine West is an industrial organizational psychology practitioner and is in private practice as TheBusinessMD which helps organizations and individuals overcome fear and explore the power of change. Ms. West is also a Featured Columnist for the National Networker http://www.thenationalnetworker.com/



For more information, please visit Christine's TNNW Bio.

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GO WEST! Organizational Empowerment

GO WEST! Honor Thy Self ...

Go West! with Christine West

“You yourself, as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection” Buddha

In every human interaction we teach other people how we wish to be treated. By the very essence of what we accept as acceptable behavior and our interactions establishes the means in which other people end up treating us by the way we treat ourselves.

I am personally fascinated in how most people are blind to this fact. We are constantly teaching others about ourselves. We do this in so many different ways that many are unaware of. Our very behavior sends signals out to the world on how to treat us. Our body language, our energy, our physiology, our words, our beliefs, our actions or inactions, our boundaries, what we take value in, what we make a priority, our self-respect, self-esteem and self worth, are some of the many factors that give others information about us. When we want the world to treat us better, we need to learn to treat ourselves better and make the adjustments within ourselves.

I have personally found when I treat myself with honor, my sales increase, my productivity improves, better people and resources come into my life and I am happy. Honor means I value myself, I make me a priority, I invest my time and energy in activity that creates happiness and moves me closer to my goals, I surround myself with healthy people, resources and activities, I fuel my body and mind with nutritious foods that helps me to focus and be emotionally stable. It also means I sell my services based on my own personal development level and self-worth. I love and accept everything about myself so that I can continue to evolve and prosper.

When we neglect ourselves and allow energy to scatter mixed results occur and we often feel depleted. We end up forgetting about our priorities, our value and end up taking on the priorities of someone else who may be leading us away from our goals. We end up procrastinating and living out the intentions of other people while never advancing ourselves.

If we are to evolve personally, professionally, cognitively, emotionally and spiritually, it is absolutely critical to recognize if you desire true change, then one must be willing to make the changes at the internal level. Nothing in your external world will change if you refuse to on the inside. This statement is true and factual when it comes to personal development, business development, organizational development, relationship development or healing physical impairments.

When we make inner adjustments the external world magically changes. The bottom line is nothing will improve until you improve. If you treat yourself poorly, then you are teaching your employer, your family, your friends and peers to do exactly the same.

I have heard people complain about their external world. What these people are really communicating is the complaints inside themselves. Everything we see in our external world and our very reaction to it is a mirrored reflection of who we are.

This statement may be difficult or easy for you as a reader to digest.

I also realize this is a different statement than some may be familiar with. It is important to reiterate this fact. The beauty or ugliness or anything in between we see in our external world is a reflection of who we are. This is why different people can experience the same event and have a very different experience. The experiences can be contrasting as though the people involved didn’t experience the same the event or the same conversation.

For example, in today’s job market many have been laid off from their job. Some people find this a great opportunity for a new beginning and others find it fatalistic. Some people when a relationship ends focus on harboring resentment and others are grateful for the experience no matter how it ended.

For growth or change to occur, if you don’t like what you see or what you experience then you need to make internal changes, learn to forgive yourself and others for mistakes, set healthy boundaries with yourself, other people and your environment and accept every piece of you. We all are a self-fulfilled prophesy - meaning our beliefs, expectations and behaviors create our reality. We possess a power within by taking responsibility and we give our power up through blaming others for what we experience or our circumstances.

Most people want more respect, more success, more prosperity and less grief and stress, yet most fail to recognize these goals are much easier to reach by learning to honor thy self.

Now, as a reader, you may be asking what do I mean? The bottom line is real simple, when you personally “HONOR” every piece of your life and work on yourself internally, your mirror will naturally reflect your inner changes.

So far I have given you some food for thought. In the next month’s column, I will help you to increase your self-worth so you can increase your prosperity, sales and quality of life. Until then ---

Genuinely,
Christine

Author: Christine M. West, TheBusinessMD, 2240 E. Tudor Rd. #976, Anchorage, Alaska, USA 99507. Phone 1-907-223-8403. Email: info@thebusinessmd.net, http://www.businessmd.net/ http://thebusinessmd.blogspot.com/ Christine West is an industrial organizational psychology practitioner and is in private practice as TheBusinessMD which helps organizations and individuals overcome fear and explore the power of change. Ms. West is also a Featured Columnist for the National Networker http://www.thenationalnetworker.com/


For more information, please visit Christine's TNNW Bio.







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GO WEST! Honor Thy Self ...

GO WEST!!! To Be or Just a WANNABE ?

GO WEST!!! with Christine M. West

We’ve all been invited to numerous social events professionally, personally and online. We connect with someone we want to impress in our audience. We want our audience to be impressed with who we are and have the desire to be interested enough to advance the relationship into a sale. Without realizing it, as you try so hard to get attention that you become totally unaware of the words spuing from your mouth are fraudulent dribble that lacks integrity, honor or ethic and you’re wondering how do I live up to this creation?

Yet it gets worse, the other person believes you and is searching for exactly what you described as a service and you have no clue how to walk the talk you just articulated. Without risking appearing utterly stupid and confessing to the truth you continue to toot your own horn to an expertise that you do not have. Now impressed with yourself, you up the stakes in this relationship and make the other person a client and commit yourself to delivering an image or a service you cannot possibly deliver.

Now under fiduciary responsibility, the only thing you can do to maintain this self-imagined image is to use condescending language with your client to taint their abilities and to create insecurity. And of course to secure your new expertise and to drive your client’s lack of self-confidence in even deeper, you continue to reinforce their fears with sending them mixed signals about your progress and continue to draw them in further into your personal dysfunction.

Eventually, the client expects you to deliver results. The pressure is on and you feel awkward because the only thing you sold to the client is your WANNABE image.

Now your world is closing in because in your mind telling the truth would be detrimental to your newly created reputation as a legend in your WANNABE world. And worse yet as you self-criticize for losing the opportunity gain customer satisfaction, repeat business and you suspect the client can see right through you. And now you are baffled in your own self-created-nonsense and do not know what to do.

Let’s talk about what drives this behavior and what to do.

Quite a while ago, a wise woman told me when you become great at what you do; you won’t need to try so hard to convince others of your expertise because people will know who you are by being who you are.

Many years ago this statement was extremely difficult for me to digest because I did not know what it really meant because I did not know how to honor who I really was and it was so different than my social conditioning. Our social conditioning has guided our behavior to lack honor and integrity. We have been taught to model the role we want to be and eventually we will grow into that role. By playing the WANNABE role we end up creating an image that lacks any substance and is based on deception.

Our EGO’s have been conditioned to being fed things such as constant attention, the need to be needed, the need to be better than everyone else or the need to diminish other people in order to build ourselves up to feel like a winner. When we feed the dogma of our EGO, we stop listening to others and have the need to be the continual informant with our mouths oozing dribble to hear ourselves talk. The EGO’s ideology believes in being right at all times at all costs. The more egotistical the person, the more that individual has an exaggerated sense of self-importance. That person is more interested in acting like as person of authority in subjects where they have no authority. This person wants to advise everyone how to run their lives when their life is a mess.

The EGO is divided. The EGO lives in past and in the future and has no clue about what is happening right now in the moment. When you are living as the “Being” that you really are, you walk the talk in state of wholeness which is undamaged. People are attracted to a frequency that reflects honor and integrity.

When we act with integrity, we do as we say and our values are aligned with our behaviors. We have the courage to reflect upon who we really are and know who we are not. We end up accepting ourselves where we are at and communicate from that place. When you have honor, you have the strength and discipline to unlearn unneeded habits and learn what is needed to grow into being more self actual. We become a trusted resource to ourselves and those around us.

When we come from a place of honor and integrity our words have power and authority when we communicate verbally, non verbally and in writing. People can hear your passion, confidence, truth and courage. You learn to communicate more substance with fewer words to influence your audience for their greater good instead of for self-serving purposes.

The more you are moving toward being self actual; doors of opportunity have a tendency to open easier and quicker. The more you learn to shed the compulsive impulses of your EGO, the Wannabe crowd moves further and further away and REAL people begin showing up.

Tell me, are you here to BE or are you just a WANNABE ?

Genuinely,
Christine

Author: Christine M. West, TheBusinessMD, 2240 E. Tudor Rd. #976, Anchorage, Alaska, USA 99507. Phone 1-907-223-8403. Email: info@thebusinessmd.net, http://www.businessmd.net/ http://thebusinessmd.blogspot.com/ Christine West is an industrial organizational psychology practitioner and is in private practice as TheBusinessMD which helps organizations and individuals overcome fear and explore the power of change. Ms. West is also a Featured Columnist for the National Networker http://www.thenationalnetworker.com/

For more information, please visit Christine's TNNW Bio.





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GO WEST!!! To Be or Just a WANNABE ?

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NETWORKING: How do You Fuel Your Relationships?

The Psychology of Networking with Christine M. West, MS, CMHT

How aware are you of how you Fuel your Relationships?

Everything requires a form of energy to be useful and function. Petroleum, coal, natural gas, and, renewable energies are some examples that fuel our buildings, cars, and modern day technology. The topic of energy is at the heart of the global political, economic, environmental, industrial, and societal infrastructures. A lot of time, energy and money are spent on discussing, arguing and debating about emerging clean and cleaner technology solutions to improve efficiencies and production of future interdependent demands. Yet we have forgotten and need to be reminded to become cognitive of how we fuel ourselves and fuel our relationships.

Our lives are a creation of interweaved webs of complication that ends up fueling ourselves and our relationships. None of us can escape this reality. This is good and bad news. A simple example of what I mean is if you fuel your body with nutritious foods and drink plenty of water daily then the body responds more vigorously. You knew that, right? The problem is we need to properly fuel more than our body. So let’s take it to the next step – our emotions and the mind.

Neurology teaches us the moment a fetus begins to develop its neurology, the central nervous system begins to develop, which is directly connected to our brain, and learning begins. The developing fetus is being fueled by the mother’s experiences in food, thought, emotion and reactions. Psychology teaches us the moment the fetus transcends from the womb to being born our caretakers begin to fuel our experiences. Our caretakers begin teach us what to believe, how to feel, how and what to think and what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. As we develop, other influences such as the media, radio and televised broadcasts, our schools, what we read, our friends, family, our workplace and everything we surround ourselves with fuels our mind and emotions.

It is our job is to differentiate between clean and damaging fuel for our mind and emotions. How do differentiate when this stuff is deeply rooted into who we think we are and how we think we are supposed to behave. We have constant interactions with family, friends, mates, our dates, bosses, co-workers, strangers, enemies and the media. How do we start to distinguish this boundary? The first place is to ensure we are feeding ourselves clean pure loving thoughts. We need to have a clean relationship with ourselves before we can have a clean relationship with others. We need to clean up our defective belief system that continues to trigger our disheartened self-images.

Spirituality teaches us the reason we seek unconditional love and support is to attract to us the circumstances and behavior we want to experience in our lives. If our belief system and self images are incongruent and misaligned, relationships end up compounding our problem. The overall purpose of our relationships is to fuel mutual love, value and support. Yet it doesn’t appear this way because we distort our interactions with other people. When we behave this way, we think we are fueling our relationships with love, support and value. The reality is we are actually sending fear, distrust, hate, and manipulation which results in making ourselves and others miserable. So how does this affect our relationship capital and our ability to grow our networks? Something to think about -

Business teaches many to believe the more pragmatic and more focused one is on the hard skills for example technology, processes, procedures and the bottom line, the more successful one will be. Those who have bought into this belief misunderstand the value of soft skills. The more proficiency one has with soft skills, the more influence one has to shape behavior and to fuel relationships positively. Most people want behavior to change yet most people unknowingly use hard skills to reinforce unwanted behaviors. We need to become smarter with selecting the correct tools to fuel and grow our relationships.


I want to help to broaden your awareness in acting smarter about growing our relationships in positive healthy manner. If you are a non-smoker and you spend your time with people who smoke. You end up subjecting yourself to the same health risks as the people who smoke because of second hand smoke inhalation. Now let’s look at how energy works. If you are generally a positive person who spends their time with pessimistic gloomy people you end up with the same second hand negativity inhalation. This is because energy flows where our attention goes. If our attention is about valuing people and our relationships, we will continue to be presented with opportunities to learn to master this skill. On the other hand if we focus on the negative or what we don’t want to happen …….. Energy flows where our attention goes.

Genuinely,

Christine

Author: Christine M. West, TheBusinessMD, 2240 E. Tudor Rd. #976, Anchorage, Alaska, USA 99507. Phone 1-907-223-8403. Email: info@thebusinessmd.net, http://www.businessmd.net/ http://thebusinessmd.blogspot.com/ TheBusinessMD offers transformational services to assist better human relationships in the workplace.To hear a conversation with Christine http://www.thebusinessmd.net/downloads/TheBusinessMD-Interview-Business-Corner-09.mp3

Christine is also hosting an enticing Webinar Series titled “How to Master the Fear in Challenging Economic Times”. This is an invigorating series that you will not want to miss! To sign up https://secure.confertel.net/tsregister.asp?program=TNNWWest

Christine is also a Featured Columnist for The National Networker

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NETWORKING: How do You Fuel Your Relationships?